1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a system comprising at least one processor and at least one device attached to the processor, the processor having a configuration table for defining the logical connections between the at least one device and the processor, the system having a display device for displaying the configuration of the system.
2. Description of the Related Art
The System Hardware Management (SHAMAN) from New Era Software offers one solution to the problem of producing and displaying hardware configuration diagrams for mainframe machines. Shaman downloads from the mainframe the data files necessary to construct the diagrams into the memory of a personal computer and then produces on the screen of the personal computer or on an attached printer the configuration diagrams.
Since the configuration displays are produced on the personal computer side of a data processing system, it is not possible to monitor dynamic changes of the hardware configuration. Additionally, Shaman is restricted to showing the hardware configuration of the peripherals connected to a single processor whereas modern computer systems consist of a plurality of computers, peripherals and devices connected together in a network.
The Graphic Configuration Manager produced by The Graphic Management Group, Inc., offers similar facilities to Shaman and has the same disadvantages.
Research Disclosure no. 292, dated August 1988 and entitled "Automated WYSIWYG Presentation of Hardware", describes briefly the advantages of graphically displaying computer system hardware but offers no detailed solution to the problem.
Known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,195,344 (Yamazaki) is a system in which the configuration of a plurality of information processing modules may be automatically monitored and supervised. The patent described here, however, does not teach a method or apparatus for displaying the information obtained from the monitoring and supervision of the information processing modules.